the smoke strands will be flying slowly around the tea cup, another scenario includes smoke strands forming from nothing, so they would have to have a spiky beggining, the whole animation is about 3 seconds.

i have a general idea about fumefx but i never encountered this kind of project, that's why i will be testing different emmiter setups and settings during the weekend, it would be great if anyone had this kind of project and could give me some hints to save some time.

i have another issue here. I wanna fill an animated object with smoke and have it have a constant turbulence and churn. object source with the same object as pushed out shell around it doesn't give pleasing results, after 50 frames or so it all turns into mush...might have to experiment with a negative gravity in the object's center. looks all nice and fine on more bulgy, static objects but on lets say a ballet dancer with thin limbs and fast movement it's a whole other story...:(

JohnnyRandom

09 September 2010, 07:18 PM

those are amazing photos on that website! thanks for sharing

i have another issue here. I wanna fill an animated object with smoke and have it have a constant turbulence and churn. object source with the same object as pushed out shell around it doesn't give pleasing results, after 50 frames or so it all turns into mush...might have to experiment with a negative gravity in the object's center. looks all nice and fine on more bulgy, static objects but on lets say a ballet dancer with thin limbs and fast movement it's a whole other story...:(

To keep smoke from turning to "Mush" :D you need to constantly emit new smoke and dissipate old smoke fairly quickly, the longer smoke sticks around the mushier it will get, of course this assumes that you are using vorticity/turbulence/or anything else that induces influences in the grid.

0.0 influences or close to it will keep the smoke shape much longer but it can also be very boring bulbous swirless looking smoke.

PsychoSilence

09 September 2010, 07:36 PM

smokes constantly emitting driven by an animated noise map. turbulence is induced by a particle source with random walk that bounces off the outer shell when it hits it. it works, it just doesn't stay persistent...

JohnnyRandom

09 September 2010, 11:30 PM

Another little personal thing I thought I would share :blush: oh I am talking about a script:eek:

FumeFX Set New Output Folder (http://4rand.com/stuff/script-fumefx-set-new-output-folder/)

Haven't got a network sim setup, so I have no idea if it works over network drives, if somebody does and they test this, will you be kind enough to let me know?

circusboy

09 September 2010, 12:55 PM

smokes constantly emitting driven by an animated noise map. turbulence is induced by a particle source with random walk that bounces off the outer shell when it hits it. it works, it just doesn't stay persistent...
Don't suppose you can make a video clip?-its hard to visualize just what your are seeing and wanna do.

NahuelL

09 September 2010, 11:29 AM

Hey guys! I wrote this script which allows you to split your FFX containers in several passes. You can also add objects in the Matte tab, and they will get the matte/shadow material. It supports up to 10 passes. This script makes changes only at render time.

I sorta scimed through the forum and read the flickering issue... so maybe i missed what was said, But Ive seen the flicking only with ...um lets just say "extended trials" of fume... at work and home with the full purchased version of fume I don't see this issue..... the bright side is there is a work around..... set your scene up to render save and close max, re-open and do nothing except press render... another option potentially would be to cache out the lighting data but have never tried that...

Well with my foot in my mouth and potentially missing the over arching issue...im off to bed, hope this helps you guys out!

Kieran

bilor

09 September 2010, 08:37 AM

hi everyone,
when I move my simulations files to a new folder name ( I change also the output path from ffx to the new folder name) I cannot render - as ffx preview show frame missing -.. any suggestions ?

adom86

09 September 2010, 08:40 AM

hi everyone,
when I move my simulations files to a new folder name ( I change also the output path from ffx to the new folder name) I cannot render - as ffx preview show frame missing -.. any suggestions ?

That always happens to me, a simple restart of max fixes it :)

circusboy

09 September 2010, 12:56 PM

I've done this a lot. It might look scary because the browser says 'save' (like you are gonna overwrite something) but if you select a file from the new cache folder ffx should adopt and load the cache from the new location.
If it displays it will render.

bilor

09 September 2010, 02:54 PM

thanks guys for your responds was really helpful :cool: !

bariscan90

09 September 2010, 11:25 AM

Hi everyone,i am trying to make a smoke kind of like 2012.
I set the dissipation to "0" for smoke and temperature but still smoke disappears and have a weird looking.I drive the smoke using a directional speed and set it to 100,smoke goes very wel until a 100-120frames then smoke stopes.Another thing that i tried is,i set the all kind of velocities to "0" like directional,radial,and drived the smoke using a wind set it to 40,the smoke goes very well again,better then the first one but this time edges of the smokes gets a weird looking and i have a 150mx75m70m grid,so it doesn't even go to the edges of the grid and gets a weird looking.I am uploading some of my failed test videos.Hope you can help me.Thank you.

http://rapidshare.com/files/421170242/2012smoke_fails.rar.html

renaissance01

09 September 2010, 03:49 AM

Hi everyone,i am trying to make a smoke kind of like 2012.
I set the dissipation to "0" for smoke and temperature but still smoke disappears and have a weird looking.I drive the smoke using a directional speed and set it to 100,smoke goes very wel until a 100-120frames then smoke stopes.Another thing that i tried is,i set the all kind of velocities to "0" like directional,radial,and drived the smoke using a wind set it to 40,the smoke goes very well again,better then the first one but this time edges of the smokes gets a weird looking and i have a 150mx75m70m grid,so it doesn't even go to the edges of the grid and gets a weird looking.I am uploading some of my failed test videos.Hope you can help me.Thank you.

http://rapidshare.com/files/421170242/2012smoke_fails.rar.html

The big issue you are most likely having is that your temperature and fuel are burning out too quickly. Buoyancy, motion, speed, and various other attributes all rely on temperature and fuel to drive them. One common approach to this effect is to run a basic simulation that is kind of 'in the ball park' of what you want to achieve and export your velocities, then run the sim through Particle Flow. With your advected particles from Pflow, add the Particles to your simulation, and re-sim. The particles will tend to follow the billowing smoke motion, BUT, they will keep emitting fuel and temperature into your grid and thus, will give that long billowing motion that you're after.

bariscan90

09 September 2010, 08:03 AM

Hi,ok i've added the pflow to the scene and now re-simming it,i'll post the result here.Thank you.

Glacierise

09 September 2010, 04:38 PM

Saw the preview vid soon - it doesn't look that good, but it's damn fast! Anyway, would be smart to do some XSI-ing whenever there's free time. If that day comes ever :)

JohnnyRandom

09 September 2010, 04:40 PM

More sweetness in Softimage!

http://vimeo.com/14003048

JohnnyRandom

09 September 2010, 05:18 PM

Agreed, there are some cool things that I like about it, for one it doesn't need a voxel grid, that in itself is pretty cool, I also like the the density the more points you add to the cloud the simulation stays the same.

PsychoSilence

09 September 2010, 07:49 PM

it is the same developer who developed the initial Krakatoa and left Frantic Films in 2005 ;) fun facts from Ansi round 01.

jimmy4d

09 September 2010, 01:01 AM

@ Johnny - Nice srcipt dude as always thank you.

@ NahuelL - will check this out looks handy as hell thanks :)

__________________

Still working on this ....doing new containers adding and adding....will keep posting till it looks cool...........
http://www.3dglove.com/10/web/justacar/ACAR.html

THarland

09 September 2010, 01:01 PM

I've never come across any discussion of using FFX with a linear workflow and i'd be interested in how many of you deal with it.
It seems that FFX was meant to be used with 1.0 gamma, using anything else results in extremely washed out color.
I have developed a way of working where I use gamma correction all the time but when I render out a FFX pass to comp I disable it.
I don't really feel it works well with GI being cast onto other objects in the scene but I can usually pull it together in post.
It just seems like there should be a better way.

Glacierise

09 September 2010, 01:10 PM

Yeah, the usual way is to render with gamma 1.0, the gamma it in comp. But the mental shader works with the linear workflow I think, I've seen demos with fume and mr daylight where it looks correct.

Burritoh

09 September 2010, 03:51 PM

We're excited at work about the new options in XSI for fluids and fire/smoke, but we're concerned about the shading of it. We've seen great examples of "simulations" in motion, but we've not see really good shading of it in XSI, like Fume has.

Does anyone have any links or examples where someone has taken tools like Slipstream or EMFluids and gotten really good fire/smoke shaders with them?

InfinitySpiral

09 September 2010, 07:38 PM

This was rendered with Softimage XSI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5iGOtqKRBA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

bariscan90

09 September 2010, 08:40 PM

Hi everyone,here is the my first test : http://www.vimeo.com/15382400

THarland

09 September 2010, 11:40 PM

Yeah, the usual way is to render with gamma 1.0...Thanks for verifying that.
It would be nice to have gamma compliance optional from within FFX.
I'd love to be able to do test renders against my scene from within Max and still spit the passes out to tweak in comp.

depleteD

09 September 2010, 12:39 AM

I'm interested in scripting custom forces in Fume.

A fellow posted a script on radial gravity, anyone have it? I would like to talk a look to get a jump start.

-Andrew

JohnnyRandom

09 September 2010, 03:30 PM

ahh I seem to remember something similar to that...

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=183&t=768125

adom86

09 September 2010, 04:49 PM

Hi everyone,here is the my first test : http://www.vimeo.com/15382400

Nice pyroclastic flow look! What kind of smoke settings did you have on that? be cool to have a breakdown of it :)

bug?: Take a look at this max 2010 FFX file (http://www.areagrey.com/other/oilfirebig.zip), sim it in v2.0 with wavelet on to about 70, at 70 and beyond something is wrong, as an unknown force pushes very fast-down on the smoke, this is CPU heavy! Causes max to stall per-frame when bug happens. Some force (I did not key or create) in the scene pushes the fire/smoke down so fast it goes off the grid. This process is CPU crazy and freezes max up on each frame trying to process the bad frames. Not sure yet if it only happens in wavelet SimMode. doing more tests to find out if it is a wavelet bug.

I'm interested in scripting custom forces in Fume.
A fellow posted a script on radial gravity, anyone have it? I would like to talk a look to get a jump start.
-Andrew

Andrew - I have some example sitting on my machine.
I will post them on the afterworks.com forum.

Kresimir

10 October 2010, 10:27 PM

bug?: Take a look at this max 2010 FFX file (http://www.areagrey.com/other/oilfirebig.zip), sim it in v2.0 with wavelet on to about 70, at 70 and beyond something is wrong and the smoke is for some reason and unknown force pushes very fast-down on the smoke, ....

Hello,

I'm not at my comp right now so cannot check your file, but I think I know what the problem is and it is fixed in FumeFX 2.1 (to be released next week).

bug?: Take a look at this max 2010 FFX file (http://www.areagrey.com/other/oilfirebig.zip), sim it in v2.0 with wavelet on to about 70, at 70 and beyond something is wrong, as an unknown force pushes very fast-down on the smoke, this is CPU heavy! Causes max to stall per-frame when bug happens. Some force (I did not key or create) in the scene pushes the fire/smoke down so fast it goes off the grid. This process is CPU crazy and freezes max up on each frame trying to process the bad frames. Not sure yet if it only happens in wavelet SimMode. doing more tests to find out if it is a wavelet bug.

Hey, I had that problem last month and I posted a temporary fix that works for me. Just create a FFX Void source and make the dimensions of the source so that it just fits in your grid. I always thought it was like an external force coming in from outside the container so I tried that (as it destroys any forces) and its worked a treat since doing it. Give it ago! :) Just make sure you have the invert option set properly otherwise it wont sim your fume :P

adom86

10 October 2010, 11:12 PM

Good luck! Anyway whilst I am here I have uploaded a low res version of a logo ident I did using fume. Shall whack the 2k version up there when i get back into the office next week! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnpcirqdCbM

I really want more detail but I hit the 6gig memory limit :( shall be gettin another 6gig soon!

PexElroy

10 October 2010, 11:26 PM

@ adom86 - Great blast! Tried your idea, thanks. Still happens at a random frame with a void :D

Kreso - I will hop on over and take a look. Do you have examples Ive started a heavy duty research project into doing some custom fume stuff, sphereical fire and spinning fire and what not. I got a 'post force' working but then my fuel and burn dissapeared. I will post the scene file asap.

But Fumefx will not "remember" these and when I choose scratchdisk it writes that I dont have access to the disk ?

Furthermore when I startup Max 2011 it writes an error message : Not able to write to Fumefx.ini and something about global settings ??

Anybody who can help with the setup og Fumefx as I am going craaaaaazy here ! http://www.3dmaxer.dk/forum/icon_smile_cool.gif

Thanks

Timmi

JohnnyRandom

10 October 2010, 05:50 PM

Is there anybode who knows how to setup preferences for FumeFX 2.0 in max 2011 ?

I have set presets path and output path and scratch disk.

But Fumefx will not "remember" these and when I choose scratchdisk it writes that I dont have access to the disk ?

Furthermore when I startup Max 2011 it writes an error message : Not able to write to Fumefx.ini and something about global settings ??

Anybody who can help with the setup og Fumefx as I am going craaaaaazy here ! http://www.3dmaxer.dk/forum/icon_smile_cool.gif

Thanks

Timmi

This sounds like an Vista/Win7 Administrative Rights issue to me. Do you have admin rights on the machine you are using?

kogden

10 October 2010, 02:04 PM

I think Johnny Random is right... its a User account control setting for vista and windows 7...... basically its making you folder and files in program files "Read Only".... if you search UAC in the search bar you should find the options to change that, also i think you could try right clicking the install folder of max and change the read only to be ticked off.

Timmi - What I do is a write a script that standardizes fume write locations per show, per shot.

a Script that builds the paths based off of a file name so every shot you do you can 1 cllick, setSHotPath and done. Directories are automagically generated and you have nice clean work flow consistent through out all of time and eternity forever. Now you are ready to rock, no stupid remaping and navigateing through seemingly endless folders.This works will with versioning systems aswell.

You want to use the setPath function.

Stivow - This is pretty badass. I would say you need to animate your timescale and expansion more at the beginngin + animated velocity or a velocity grater on your emitter to give it a punch. and avoid those smooth Fire Bubbles you have on top of your explosion. Overall though.....pretty gangsta.

-Andrew

feldy

10 October 2010, 10:00 PM

Sounds handy any chance on posting it for us non max scripters here ha?

Timmi - What I do is a write a script that standardizes fume write locations per show, per shot.

a Script that builds the paths based off of a file name so every shot you do you can 1 cllick, setSHotPath and done. Directories are automagically generated and you have nice clean work flow consistent through out all of time and eternity forever. Now you are ready to rock, no stupid remaping and navigateing through seemingly endless folders.This works will with versioning systems aswell.

You want to use the setPath function.

-Andrew

depleteD

10 October 2010, 10:40 PM

Well I cant really, Becasue every studio has a different drive set up and project set up. A lot of the script is string spliting and reassembling into the drive structure...Ill ask my supe if I can post it. It has info on how blizzard sets up projects and drives and that might be material I'm not allowed to share.

If I can get our studio to copy Blizzard's project tree, our work will look exactly the same right?

PsychoSilence

10 October 2010, 07:56 PM

GREAT reference for flame throwers and dry ice/fire extinguishers here:

http://vimeo.com/13639493

FYI flamethrower is 1000fps, fire extinguisher is 400fps.

cheers,
Ansi

depleteD

10 October 2010, 08:11 PM

Yea this video is soooo sick.

JohnnyRandom

10 October 2010, 12:11 AM

FumeFX 2.1 is in the wild, login, grab it, and enjoy the new goodies :)

martaaay

10 October 2010, 12:25 AM

I dont see anything on sitnisati.com or turbosquid.com about it yet. What'd they change?

depleteD

10 October 2010, 01:06 AM

Cash Money

JohnnyRandom

10 October 2010, 01:08 AM

Pretty good list, some nice additions IMO

What’s new in 2.1

FumeFX now supports fully interactive simulations. That means that you can change almost every parameter during the simulation and see it's influence on the simulation result. It is even possible to change what channels will be saved to the output file, or to move objects and change their parameters.

This version introduces variable density solver (http://forums.cgsociety.org/_21.htm#_Simulation) that uses smoke density and temperature as variables. The result of this addition is increased physical realism, where cold air and denser smoke will have stronger inertia compared to the hot air and lower density smoke.

New is also the CFL condition (http://forums.cgsociety.org/_21.htm#_Simulation) parameter that directly controls the number of simulation steps. This is the value that defines the maximum distance allowed for any cell data (velocity, smoke, fire, etc..) to travel in one simulation step. If velocities are bigger then defined by this condition, simulation sub steps will be initiated.

We have also added new advection (http://forums.cgsociety.org/_21.htm#_Simulation) scheme that reduces dissipation and preserves detail.

- finalRender 3.5 Global Illumination is now up to 6x faster !

- Preview Window now prints out 3ds max frame number.

- Ability to stop/continue the Retimer.

Changes:

- Gravity parameter from previous version is now moved to Smoke rollout and is named Smoke Buoyancy.

- Smoke and Fuel Buoyancies have to be <0 to make them fall. Smoke Buoyancy can be >0 which will make smoke to rise.

- Buoyancy param. from previous versions is now moved to the Temperature tab and is named Temperature Buoyancy.

Fixes:

- Files bigger than 2GB caused file reading error.

- Improved cubic interpolation.

- Retimer flickering when smoke source was set to add densities to the grid.

The interactive mode is sweet. Really like the new advection modes, buoyancy, and variable density too. You have to be careful with the new advection, it can cause horz. artifacting in fast moving fluids but its movement is way cool :)

renaissance01

10 October 2010, 01:50 AM

Woh! Massive update. Sitni Sati guys are kickin ass.

HornBerger

10 October 2010, 04:55 AM

Phoenix FD is the catalyst, love the competition :D

simonenastasi

10 October 2010, 08:23 AM

This was rendered with Softimage XSI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5iGOtqKRBA&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Are you sure? Afaik it was done in xsi except for rendering (krakatoa, of course).

Glacierise

10 October 2010, 09:34 AM

Hehe :) The gret force of competition! FFX is alive again, cheers!

circusboy

10 October 2010, 01:29 PM

Are you sure? Afaik it was done in xsi except for rendering (krakatoa, of course).
Sounds like the thought about krakatoa-but didn't use it in the end.
http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=39318

Hmmm, hopefully Sam Korshid can see your post.....hes the one who did that I think.

From what Ive heard, its a very very very large scale grid.

Cryptite

10 October 2010, 01:05 AM

Did they let you sneak in any fine fume handywork in the cataclysm trailer, Andrew?

depleteD

10 October 2010, 02:46 AM

Yes, I did the zeplin explosion, tower collapse, and the lava pit.

Lots and lots of fume :)

manuhyd

10 October 2010, 07:29 AM

my attempt of large pyroclastic smoke with fumefx 2.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7GIITTbaf0
http://vimeo.com/16016203

Cryptite

10 October 2010, 12:55 PM

Nice! That zeppelin explosion was bangin. Were all the likely effects fume, or what was deathwing-on-fire? Looked almost like maya fluids to me at times.

Glacierise

10 October 2010, 01:15 PM

@Andrew: Awesome work dude, great detail!

Rif

10 October 2010, 06:25 PM

manuhyd (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=217354) great attempt .. your getting it. you got way too much xyz turbulance.. but good stuff.

depleteD

10 October 2010, 08:24 PM

Thx guys, yea all fire and smoke fume, :)

I actually been advised that I gotta keep technique talk down to a minimum, sorry guys. Its a bummer.

manuhyd (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=217354) : Cool stuff but as rif said, to much turbulence. Where is that force coming from? Its like there is just this crazy stuff pushing your smoke arounda nd its not looking natural. If you want to break up your smoke in natural ways use varying temperatures at a high frequency and varying velocity emitters.

mclawest

10 October 2010, 10:54 PM

Hmmm, hopefully Sam Korshid can see your post.....hes the one who did that I think.

From what Ive heard, its a very very very large scale grid.

looks so.. I tried to put it in a small container, but it have to be a very thick setUp to get the same result
http://vimeo.com/15404509 - small container.
http://vimeo.com/12371351 - another technic with large container.

manuhyd

10 October 2010, 07:14 AM

thanks for the comments Rif & Andrew.

I'm re-simulating with your suggestions, will upload soon.

circusboy

10 October 2010, 03:00 PM

looks so.. I tried to put it in a small container, but it have to be a very thick setUp to get the same result

hi everyone,
I have a pf system setup to use it with krakatoa but I cannot see my fumefx particles to viewport or/and to rendering.
I have a fumefxbirth with selected fumefx source, emit frames are correct rate 10000, enable also the velocity and an fumefx follow with selceted ffx source.
To pf source I'm using maximum particles for upper limit, and to viewport precent doesnt matter what I'm going to put use as a value because I cannot see anything.

Any suggestions ?

-Vasilis

Dusmus

10 October 2010, 12:49 PM

Hello,

Do you have a light in your scene ? Krakatoa won't render anything (well it does render something but only the alpha channel) if you don't have a light.

In your fume birth, under the 'smoke' try decreasing the min value. Your smoke may be below the default value of 1, thats the threshold it uses for birthing particles in that range. Also look at that in your follow fumefx

Darknon

10 October 2010, 11:27 AM

mclawest (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=339018): very nice. How do you set it up? I mean step one. Do you emit smoke from a plane (object source)?, or is it particles, or something else? I've tried with a plane, but the smoke is not really going anywhere unless theres fire to make it rise up. I've tried with particles, but havent really had any good luck with that, regardless of using many particles or few particles.

Any tips to make the smoke rise up like that?

mclawest

10 October 2010, 03:18 PM

mclawest (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=339018): very nice. How do you set it up? I mean step one. Do you emit smoke from a plane (object source)?, or is it particles, or something else? I've tried with a plane, but the smoke is not really going anywhere unless theres fire to make it rise up. I've tried with particles, but havent really had any good luck with that, regardless of using many particles or few particles.

Any tips to make the smoke rise up like that?
In a first video the smoke generated fron raticles (particleSrc), in a second - from plane source..
First some test is a accidental result of research to another kind of effect :) And the second I was done with info from this site.

syedamin7

10 October 2010, 03:43 PM

hey guys,
i was wondering if any of you have tried an explosion in slowmo? i am attempting it and it doesn't seem to be going on that great. any suggestions?

Glacierise

10 October 2010, 03:55 PM

Since you have a retimer in FFX2, why not use that? Sim it normally and then slow down with the retimer.

XRM

10 October 2010, 07:02 PM

Hi friends...

I'm back again. Feels so good... Had forgotten my username, password and email id.
I just somehow remembered it today.....I'm so so happy :applause:

Since you have a retimer in FFX2, why not use that? Sim it normally and then slow down with the retimer.
when you set retimer to something like ,1 (90%), then the sim looks like in post with a low fps (retimed sim is twitches) :(

Glacierise

10 October 2010, 09:49 AM

Well, that's pretty extreme :) Make your original sim slow too, using the timescale param, then slow down as necessary :)

FabianB

10 October 2010, 02:47 PM

when you set retimer to something like ,1 (90%), then the sim looks like in post with a low fps (retimed sim is twitches) :(

Yeah I would avoid the Retimer if possible. It's OK if you set it to MAX 0.6. Everything below that and you will get artifacts (Sometimes more sometimes less).

PsychoSilence

10 October 2010, 03:15 PM

And you need to have the velocities/extra detail cached...blows up your cache files to up to 40 times.

syedamin7

10 October 2010, 05:44 PM

Thanks guys, unfortunately i still haven't got my hands on FFX2 yet. But I did read up on it and saw that you have to include velocities and if you have flames, temperature in as well. Like Anslem said. But I didn't imagine it would be upto 40 times :o eeesh....

For the time being I did a test, i set up my pflow explosion so its crawling at snail pace. The particle count is small. I made the radius in fumefx huge. That gives me that feeling of bubbles crammed together (dunno how else to explain it) u get in big explosions. zero buoyancy so that the bubbles kinda keep their shape and the burn rate fairly slow. takes a while for it to turn to smoke. And ofcourse the time scale is low too. This gives me a look close to slowmo.

renaissance01

10 October 2010, 11:52 PM

If you have access to Nuke, you can always re-time it in post using Nukes Oflow. It gives pretty good results by sub-sampling between each frame and creating an in-between to give nice smooth results. You can get some artifacting but its definitely worth a try imo.

kogden

10 October 2010, 03:04 AM

Hey there, i have a feeling that the re-timing is "twitchy" because your original sim wasn't simulated with "cubic interpolation" checked on... Give that a try, the original sim will be slightly longer as it calculated more data per voxel, but it will help that out when you go to re-time.

Love to know if it works!

And yes Oflow is also very good, and twiksta or whatever it is in aftereffects is alright too :)

Cheers Kieran.

mclawest

10 October 2010, 01:03 PM

Hey, guys!
Stuck on finding a solution how to make smoke hang by reaching the highest point (like here (http://vimeo.com/15227343)) .. Has anyone encountered this problem?
My current (http://vimeo.com/15567022) test.

FabianB

10 October 2010, 01:12 PM

Hey, guys!
Stuck on finding a solution how to make smoke hang by reaching the highest point (like here (http://vimeo.com/15227343)) .. Has anyone encountered this problem?
My current (http://vimeo.com/15567022) test.

Vimeo is not working for me on this PC, so I can't watch the reference, but I guess you want to slow down the smoke more over time. Try to lower the heat production and/or the velocity on your source + make the temperature dissipate faster, by lowering the dissipation threshold and upping the strength. If that doesn't work you could also use Velocity damping, but I would only use it if nothing else works.

mclawest

10 October 2010, 01:50 PM

Vimeo is not working for me on this PC, so I can't watch the reference, but I guess you want to slow down the smoke more over time. Try to lower the heat production and/or the velocity on your source + make the temperature dissipate faster, by lowering the dissipation threshold and upping the strength. If that doesn't work you could also use Velocity damping, but I would only use it if nothing else works.
thanks for the tip, I will try it today at night sim..
I tried to set gravity a little bit higher, but it is just stretched the smoke :(

FabianB

10 October 2010, 02:17 PM

thanks for the tip, I will try it today at night sim..
I tried to set gravity a little bit higher, but it is just stretched the smoke :(

Great, looking forward to the result. Yeah gravity won't work, the smoke won't raise that fast but too slow it down and keep it on a specific height you have to kill the temperature.

circusboy

10 October 2010, 02:22 PM

I would think buoyancy is also a factor. Maybe even animate it. And with your ref I agree with others the time scale must be quite low.

mclawest

10 October 2010, 02:25 PM

I would think buoyancy is also a factor. Maybe even animate it. And with your ref I agree with others the time scale must be quite low.
I want to get a not discontinuous sim and I think that the animated params wouldn't work there.. I will upload a latest test soon..

FabianB

10 October 2010, 02:40 PM

Had a chance to look at your wip now! The rolling is great and I would keep the timescale as it is BUT I would lower the velocity of the particles, buoancy and heat production! Turn on temperature in your viewport and decide at height you want to slow down your smoke. Play with the min and max temp values in the viewport, so you get an idea at which value you have to kill the temp to slow it down.

mclawest

10 October 2010, 03:03 PM

Had a chance to look at your wip now! The rolling is great and I would keep the timescale as it is BUT I would lower the velocity of the particles, buoancy and heat production! Turn on temperature in your viewport and decide at height you want to slow down your smoke. Play with the min and max temp values in the viewport, so you get an idea at which value you have to kill the temp to slow it down.
oh.. I didn't cached a temperature data.. I will try all your advices.. Thanks!

FabianB

10 October 2010, 07:38 PM

Hey guys,
I was playing around with Fume 2.1 to test all the new cool features and made some large scale smoke. :) I will share the scenefile if anyone is interested, hope you like it.

http://vimeo.com/16219323

circusboy

10 October 2010, 08:08 PM

Hell yeah!
I just got word I'll be getting my hands on 2.1 soon (I was feeling so *old*).

Dusmus

10 October 2010, 08:38 PM

Hey Fabian,

Nice test, scenefile could be cool (wondering what kind of emission you are using, particles ?)

Thanks ;)

mclawest

10 October 2010, 10:57 PM

I want to get a not discontinuous sim and I think that the animated params wouldn't work there.. I will upload a latest test soon..

so, here is a failed test http://vimeo.com/16213953

P.S. I don't have a fume2.1 but I would love to meet with your scene :)

kogden

10 October 2010, 02:00 AM

There looking pretty cool!

Have you considered adding more gravity as-well?

amckay

10 October 2010, 02:06 AM

I have found that if you are doing extreme retiming it's best to make sure your opacity's in the color are not too sharp from 0 to 1. As the colors will not have much room to fade over time, so they kind of get jerky.
So basically make sure your have a lot of fade up time from the left to the right in your gradient or color curve to allow for a smooth transition when it's much slower as this becomes much more visible in slow motion.

For Fable 3 commercial I did a shitload of slow motion fire, smoke etc. and I found that to be an issue.
Also we slowed some down in Flame which worked really well too just FYI.

FabianB

10 October 2010, 09:14 AM

Hey guys,
here is the file, I tweaked it a little bit to get rid of the diffusion:
http://vfx-training.com/training/BIGSMOKE_CGTalk_Max2011.rar

cheers,
Fabian

XRM

10 October 2010, 11:28 AM

Fab, man its really great...(I can go on saying that again and again, ;). You know me :D)

If this for me - yes :) And the gravity didn't helps here.. I'm doing some tricks with temperature of smoke at the moment.

XRM

10 October 2010, 01:16 PM

@Fabian : Bro you know I want to but, you know I'm still away from 2.1 Man... :(

@mclawest : I agree with Fabian...

Cheers!!! :)

FabianB

10 October 2010, 01:17 PM

If this for me - yes :) And the gravity didn't helps here.. I'm doing some tricks with temperature of smoke at the moment.

It doesn't look like a failed test to me! I like the movement a lot! And you can already see that it starts to slow down, only a little bit too late. :-) But you are definitely on the right track! You are using particles for the emission, right? Perhaps you should try to fade out the velocity over time. (If you are using TP make sure you move the particles to another group before you kill them, or the afc won't work correctly)

PS: If anyone finds something to improve in my file, it would be great if you would upload it again. Perhaps we can create the coolest large scale smoke ever this way. :)

Fabian

adom86

10 October 2010, 01:19 PM

Awesome smoke effects guys! Shame its a max 2011 file... and I dont have fume 2.1 yet but ah well good RnD work... Going to try it my self! :)

Thanks for the tips!

PexElroy

10 October 2010, 11:39 PM

@ FabianB - Great smoke! Could you save your file out to max 2010 also ? Thanks :)

FabianB

10 October 2010, 09:19 AM

Hey guys,
the archiv includes 4 files now:
Max2010, Max2011
V1 is the version in the Vimeo video
V2 is a little different! The smoke moves a little slower and the diffuse smoke dissipates a little faster!

http://vfx-training.com/training/BIGSMOKE_CGTalk.rar

cheers,
Fabian

adom86

10 October 2010, 09:48 AM

Thanks Fabian :)

Did you actually sim at 20gig limit? :o

FabianB

10 October 2010, 10:44 AM

Did you actually sim at 20gig limit? :o
Yeah :), but don't worry about it! I made the container this big only to be on the safe side, it won't take more than 6 or 7 GB.

adom86

10 October 2010, 10:49 AM

Yeah :), but don't worry about it! I made the container this big only to be on the safe side, it won't take more than 6 or 7 GB.

Haha cool, nearly had a heart attack when I saw the 20gig :P So was your version done without fluid mapping/wavelet? Last question i swear :)

FabianB

10 October 2010, 10:50 AM

No fluid mapping, no wavelet. :)
But I'm sure you could improve it with wavelet, this would also help to get rid of the 20 GB limit. :)

circusboy

10 October 2010, 01:03 PM

Hi Fabian-
I don't suppose Max 2011 has the option to save back to 2009 (I know, I know shoot me now)?
I don't have access to either 2010 or 2011 so I don't know.
If it is possible to do a 2009 version I'd be grateful!

-many thanks

FabianB

10 October 2010, 01:09 PM

Hi Fabian-
I don't suppose Max 2011 has the option to save back to 2009 (I know, I know shoot me now)?
I don't have access to either 2010 or 2011 so I don't know.
If it is possible to do a 2009 version I'd be grateful!

-many thanks

oh :) that could be a problem! I don't have access to max 2009, perhaps some who has can convert it.
The file isn't that great anyway, the setup is a little messy and not really optimized. Just did it as a starting point, so that perhaps someone else could work on it and in the end we would have like the coolest smoke ever. :) The basic idea is, just make a simple src with a noise map and really high radial and directional velocity based on temperature.

PsychoSilence

10 October 2010, 02:52 PM

Hey guys,
the archiv includes 4 files now:
Max2010, Max2011
V1 is the version in the Vimeo video
V2 is a little different! The smoke moves a little slower and the diffuse smoke dissipates a little faster!

http://vfx-training.com/training/BIGSMOKE_CGTalk.rar

cheers,
Fabian

nice one :)

tarik3d

10 October 2010, 03:45 PM

Wow, Ive just looked at the latest two animations of the smoke, Very Nice!!

tarik3d

10 October 2010, 07:47 PM

Can I ask a question, What sort of settings are you guys putting in to get massive amounts of just smoke.Its like smoke clouds spawn off each other.
Kind regards
Tarik

FabianB

10 October 2010, 10:21 PM

Can I ask a question, What sort of settings are you guys putting in to get massive amounts of just smoke.Its like smoke clouds spawn off each other.
Kind regards
Tarik

turn on fuel creates smoke, but turn off fire for rendering. High Timescale, high burnrate, good mix between vorticity and advection stride.

tarik3d

10 October 2010, 09:38 AM

Thanks FabianB I have not actually changed the advection stride so I will look into what that does.

Under the Sim tab for smoke Buoyancy: the default is set to -1 does this not mean the smoke does not have any lift?

Ive trying to get a large amount of smoke, do you keep the temperature and burn rate the same or do you need to animate it up and down to get the huge puffs of smoke?

FabianB

10 October 2010, 10:07 AM

Yes, that one is a little confusing. :) Smoke buoyancy in 2.1 was gravity in 2.0, so smoke buoyancy of -1 means gravity of 1. The "old" 2.0 buoyancy is now called temperature buoyancy.

I always try to not animate the values, so you can get smoke puffs without animating anything.

tarik3d

10 October 2010, 10:10 AM

Yes, that one is a little confusing. :) Smoke buoyancy in 2.1 was gravity in 2.0, so smoke buoyancy of -1 means gravity of 1. The "old" 2.0 buoyancy is now called temperature buoyancy.

I always try to not animate the values, so you can get smoke puffs without animating anything.

Thats great to know that :) thanks. I will get that down in my note book :) I am trying to get a intial push using

The smoke does seem quite fluffy though at the moment and not very solid and agressive.

Well add a bit of radial velocity too...and a little bit of higher expansion will help too. Try 2 for example... Increase the Fuel emits smoke to 10...no need for the source smoke..you can turn it off...

The thing is the smoke needs to have this initial push...When you get it, its done. Don't use turbulence though...It will breakup the smoke shape...

Also no need to up the timescale...These kinda smokes don't depend on timescale...they actually move quite slow...

Cheers!!! :)

FabianB

10 October 2010, 10:55 AM

Here are some values to get you started:

Simple Src with a Noise Map for Fuel and Temperature, Smoke disabled. Phase of the noise animated like 6 over 100 frames. Small map size like 0.1 or even smaller.

On the src: directional velocity like 7, check the channel mixer and set it to temperature, so the velocity will be based on the map, too.
Same with radial velocity, set this one to 2.

@Fabian : Ah ma bad... I should have mentioned that FumeFX is vast...has so many different ways to get an effect :)
Yes for vorticity, the timescale will help a lot... But if you wanna sim it with default timescale, do increase the Temperature...temperature/Vorticity is a counter option for timescale/vorticity... :)

Cheers!!! :)

tarik3d

10 October 2010, 11:10 AM

Thank you very much you too, thats very helpfull :) I will give these settings a blast now.
Thank you very much again :)

tarik3d

10 October 2010, 11:40 AM

I am sorry for all the questions :(
I have used the settings you said and they work nice. The smoke goes so far then just settles. If I wanted it to grow and grow in the direction of the emitter. Would I need to animate the velocity so it goes further during the animation?

Thank you

FabianB

10 October 2010, 11:46 AM

Turn up the heat production to something like 400 and perhaps a little more temp bouyancy 0,25
And I forgot something important earlier, turn your max iterations down to something like 80!

tarik3d

10 October 2010, 12:06 PM

I think I know what one of the problems I am having is that I am running my sims to low. I am running them a size of 155x155x155 for example. It isnt picking up half of the smoke and thats why it looks like it is not moving much.

FabianB

10 October 2010, 12:15 PM

Yes, for smoke you should lower your spacing ! For tests I use something like 3 X 250 most of the time! But it really depends on your grid size! If you have a grid like 3X5000 it won't help you much if the adaptive grid only picks up something like 10X10X10.

XRM

10 October 2010, 12:16 PM

Ramp it up man...Those settings are for Large scale sims...Go for real scale. :)
Try something like 1000X1000X1000 for example
Sim in low res and use wavelet...It saves time :)

Cheers :)

PexElroy

10 October 2010, 05:07 PM

@ FabianB - excellent, thanks for 2010 files and sim info :twisted:

@ circusboy - max 2011 can save down to max 2010, but not lower :banghead:

Darknon

10 October 2010, 06:01 PM

Very nice info guys... Keep the questions and answers coming, very helpfull. I've been wanted to ask the exact same questions tarik3d :)

mclawest

10 October 2010, 06:14 PM

Here are some values to get you started:

Simple Src with a Noise Map for Fuel and Temperature, Smoke disabled. Phase of the noise animated like 6 over 100 frames. Small map size like 0.1 or even smaller.

On the src: directional velocity like 7, check the channel mixer and set it to temperature, so the velocity will be based on the map, too.
Same with radial velocity, set this one to 2.

Just another way to generate smoke, IMO you get a little more natural rolling effect, since smoke (not dust) is generally born from a temperature based reaction. It is a handy trick. Fume 2.x+ even have a few more options to control fuel born smoke, making it even more useful.

FabianB

10 October 2010, 06:50 PM

Yes! What Johnny said + you have a lot of additional parameters you can use to drive your smoke, like: heat production and expansion! If you emit from an object it also helps with the rendering because it helps to prevent self shadowing. The smoke gets born a little away from the surface and not directly on it. So a lot of reasons to do it this way IMO.

vishy123

10 October 2010, 06:56 PM

Some FumeFx smoke stuff i have been doin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO545ksk46Y

depleteD

10 October 2010, 07:25 PM

Ver cool man! :D

man you guys are posting wicked stuff on this thread! Love it. Great motivation for me to do some personal fx work...

-Andrew

Lub4095

10 October 2010, 04:42 PM

Can someone please help me out with this error on my thread http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=183&t=929247 . I can barely make a simple simulation of a fire!

sleepydragon

11 November 2010, 08:52 AM

Some FumeFx smoke stuff i have been doin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO545ksk46Y

dude i'm loving the ocean..please tell how you did it?and what application did you use?..was it maya fluids

sleepydragon

11 November 2010, 09:02 AM

hows it guys and gals so after about +/-2 months of nail biting i finally managed to get some "okay" looking train smoke..i have uploaded some tests so please feel free to leave any crits and comments.i will upload a final/graded version soon for this shot

http://vimeo.com/user5090648

and thanks to you guys out there for your words of wisdom...most appreciate it :buttrock:

JonathanFreisler

11 November 2010, 09:05 AM

dude i'm loving the ocean..please tell how you did it?and what application did you use?..was it maya fluids

Pretty sure it says max 2011 and FR...

sleepydragon

11 November 2010, 09:06 AM

Pretty sure it says max 2011 and FR...

OMS :blush: i feel like such a doos...how did i not see that :banghead:
thanks JF and please ignore the silly question vishy123

XRM

11 November 2010, 11:18 AM

@tarik3d - Well, can you upload the preview so that we can actually understand...Also mention you grid size and resolution...You might need to expand your grid dimension

Cheers!!! :)

tarik3d

11 November 2010, 11:21 AM

Hi again, I have siming at roughly the 200 to 250 then putting it through the wavlet sim at around x3 and it is and it is hitting around the 80mb per frame but it just seems to hit a brick wall and stop. Is this generally to high or am I putting something wrong in. Its taking about 40 mins a frame now so not sure if that is very slow or not.

Cheers

adom86

11 November 2010, 11:29 AM

Hi again, I have siming at roughly the 200 to 250 then putting it through the wavlet sim at around x3 and it is and it is hitting around the 80mb per frame but it just seems to hit a brick wall and stop. Is this generally to high or am I putting something wrong in. Its taking about 40 mins a frame now so not sure if that is very slow or not.

Cheers

Keep an eye on your memory load. Is it topping out?

tarik3d

11 November 2010, 11:35 AM

Sorry, Do you mean if I press control alt and delete and then go to performance and see if it is maxing out? It says in 12.4 gig and some space left at the top.

XRM

11 November 2010, 11:36 AM

Sorry, Do you mean if I press control alt and delete and then go to performance and see if it is maxing out? It says in 12.4 gig and some space left at the top.

Well how much RAM do you have?? If its less than that 12,4gig, it gets transferred to the cache, which increases the sim time by nearly 10 times...

Cheers!!! :)

XRM

11 November 2010, 11:44 AM

Arh ok, Thank you :)

Is there a way to get round this? As I want to sim stuff round about 1000 to get in that extra detail.

Yah, get more RAM:rolleyes:...lolz...Optimise your settings...See what can be done to keep it low...mis and match...Its just that the smoke is filling up the whole grid...Its causing the problem...

Cheers!!! :)

tarik3d

11 November 2010, 11:44 AM

Arh ok, Thank you :)

Is there a way to get round this? As I want to sim stuff round about 1000 to get in that extra detail.

Hey, Thanks for the help again :) I will look at the settings, might try lowing to quality or maybe its something in the wavelets settings as it sims normals fast thanks all again :)

tarik3d

11 November 2010, 01:36 PM

Ive just resimed the Wavelets and it memory usage is around the 4 gig mark with using the detail scale 2. I might try bumping up the original sim

XRM

11 November 2010, 05:44 PM

Ive just resimed the Wavelets and it memory usage is around the 4 gig mark with using the detail scale 2. I might try bumping up the original sim

Yes. I think that can help... :)

Cheers!!! :)

Darknon

11 November 2010, 08:42 PM

Yo all.

I'm trying to do some cool stuff here, but fumefx is killing my machine if I try to do a decent resolusion simulation.

Here is a simulation I did, It took all night and most of the day to sim.

It's 300 frames, and the res size is 500 x 300 x 500, which shouldn't be a big deal right. I have 8gig ram. With this resolusion, it is posible to complete the sim. If I go to something like 1083 x 500 x 833 (which I'm trying to do now) then I can get around 100 frames before it all goes to extreme slowmotion, and kills my machine if I try to even open a internet browser.

Anyways, here is the 500 x 300 x 500 resolusion.

Youtube Link Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HJx8UC1YWs)

Any ideas to how to do higher simulations without killing the machine. There must be some rules of thump or something.

---

FabianB

11 November 2010, 08:52 PM

Looking pretty awesome already! Great work! I don't think you have to go much higher than this! 1083 x 500 x 833 seems like overkill to me for a sim that's already looking great!
A few things you could try:

01. Try to adjust the adaptive grid as tight as possible!
02. You are using a wind, right? Try to use a gravity vector instead, it's much faster and gives you pretty much the same effect.
03. Try to use wavelet, the basic simulation looks good enough!

Hope this helps!

cheers,
Fabian

circusboy

11 November 2010, 09:10 PM

I don't think you have to go much higher than this! 1083 x 500 x 833 seems like overkill to me for a sim that's already looking great!

If he wants to get rid of the dissapearing at the boundary and/or match a scene he might.
But yeah I think it looks great so far. And I too would think wavelet is your next step.

Darknon

11 November 2010, 09:47 PM

To FabianB

I can't ajust the adaptive grid can I ? You mean the big grid?

yeah I'm using a wind, with alot of turbulence, I'll try a gravity vector instead.

Wavelet is only making the render look more high res right, like turning SD into HD or something like that. It is not making the simulation any more detailed, like more smoke curls and sim details like that, only the render resolusion right.
And if I do a wavelet sim on this 500 x 300 x 500, then the wavelet will ump the resolusion to maybe 1000 x 600 x 1000 or something like that, and then my computer will die anyways. Then it is better to just ump the basic sim and get that extra detail in there, right... For wavelet NOT to kill my computer, I have to make a lower res base sim, and then do the wavelet, but then I'll have less details. Does that even make any sense?

So I havent really used wavelet after I found out that it also kills the computer.

FabianB

11 November 2010, 10:19 PM

The adaptive grid is the blue grid inside of your main grid, try to set the Sensitivity to something like 0,15 as a starting point.

Wavelet WILL result in more detail, so you will get more smoke curls and stuff!

amckay

11 November 2010, 11:35 PM

yeah crank your sensitivity up to 20 or 30 when you're doing stuff that is moving through a grid.
I'm doing a phoenix 30ft bird on fire right now that travels very fast, and having multiple grids and high sensitivity saves your ass.

As for wavelet, essentially it's a bit more efficient than that, it is using a low res grid and resizing it, but then if you imagine giant pixels that are actually 10x10 pixels to form the block, it uses the vector and temperature to add additional displacement to the shape. So you will not get more complex curling or shape from the sim, but you will get extra detail by essentially a vector grid pushing the grid around again at a higher resolution than before.

The problem lies in the fact that you are outputting velocity, temperature, fuel, smoke and extra detail, rather than just smoke and fuel. So simulating does increase drastically too. So it isn't necessarily faster to simulate with wavelet, however you can get much more detail.
I use both methods depending on what I want.

I have a lot of comping tricks I do once the renders are complete to get more realistic looks to my flames and smoke usually after everything's done, so it doesn't just stop at simulating.

XRM

11 November 2010, 05:55 AM

Yes, thats so true about what wavelet is...
And that sensitivity thingy is so very much helpful...I tweak it all the time...Real time saver actually with real scale explosions... :)

@Allan : Is wavelet the same feature that Houdini Volume has as HighRes or something different?? I find so many similarities...

Cheers!!! :)

sleepydragon

11 November 2010, 07:47 AM

Howzit all

heres a link to some of my test for a meteor ... any advice on where im going wrong will be most appreciated.for the test i used only fumefx...is that the right approach?should i be using a particle system(pflow) with this to drive the fume particles?
or will I be able to achieve a realistic looking meteor with only fumefx?
also one thing I always struggle with is the dissipation of the smoke in the tail(any tips on this matter will be awesome)

http://vimeo.com/user5090648/videos

thanks :wavey:

Glacierise

11 November 2010, 08:18 AM

It's just too smooth. You need to break it up. Emit some particles with different speeds from the meteor, use them to add velocity in the grid. That should help :)

adom86

11 November 2010, 08:34 AM

FumeFX continues to baffle :P

Was doing a good old fireball (not done one in a while!) And thought I would test the grid spacing 'sim upto'. Well so far the fireball covers most of my container and the last version I set to sim upto 30gig memory and it still used hardly anything! About 1.5 GB if that. Im interested in how far I can push it! :P

It's just too smooth. You need to break it up. Emit some particles with different speeds from the meteor, use them to add velocity in the grid. That should help :)

what is the best way to break up the meteor..do you think i should hand animate pieces breaking off or use something like fracture in maya or rayfire?sorry for such a noob question!
also i was thinking should i just finish animating the meteor with the breaking off chunks and the emition of smaller pieces first before taking it into fumefx["i should hey"] :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: and if so what would be the best way to approach this?
need serious help here please... :bowdown:

thanks so much

Glacierise

11 November 2010, 09:00 AM

I didn't mean break up the meteor, but that would also be a nice idea. I meant break-up the motion in the grid, so you get more interesting shapes instead of a straight line. It's a matter of composition :) So that's why I said - spawn some particles from the meteor, put some turbulence on them so they fly away, and use them as a source in FFX, adding only velocity. This will stir you your grid, and it will form a more interesting shape.

FabianB

11 November 2010, 09:14 AM

Yes, a particle source works great for a meteor!
If I had to do a meteor I would emit particles from the "sphere" with high speed and direction variation but with a short lifespan, just 2 or 3 frames! That way you can control the length of the trail with the burnrate. Add in the sphere as an object source but disable emit smoke and fuel on it, just emit a little additional temperature and velocity from it. (PS if you add an object as object source, it works better for collisions than if you would just add it in as object in fume)
In Fume 2.0 and up you can also use the void source to keep your simulation area under control.

cheers,
Fabian

adom86

11 November 2010, 09:31 AM

This doesn't make any sense! I took the grid spacing back down to 495x495x495 and it now uses 1gig ram on first few frames in comparison to about 200mb when it was set at 700x700x700. Confused :)

FabianB

11 November 2010, 09:40 AM

This doesn't make any sense! I took the grid spacing back down to 495x495x495 and it now uses 1gig ram on first few frames in comparison to about 200mb when it was set at 700x700x700. Confused :)
Yeah, that's really confusing! But it happens sometimes! It's because if you bring down your spacing, your smoke and fire will expand more and will travel faster through the voxels (because there are less of them). So it will occupy more space, which will take more Ram.

adom86

11 November 2010, 10:05 AM

Yeah, that's really confusing! But it happens sometimes! It's because if you bring down your spacing, your smoke and fire will expand more and will travel faster through the voxels (because there are less of them). So it will occupy more space, which will take more Ram.

Hmm I suppose that makes sense but yes it is odd :)

sleepydragon

11 November 2010, 10:48 AM

@Glacierise: thanks I will give this a try :)
@FabianB: thanks for tips :beer:

FabianB

11 November 2010, 11:07 AM

hey guys,
can anyone with Fume 2.1 installed confirm that something strange is going on with freeflow?
It doesn't seem to accept directional or radial velocity if freeflow is checked.

JoeBananas

11 November 2010, 01:21 PM

Hi guys, here's a fireball test I've been working on for the last week. I can't really take it much further as its maxing out my ram now (8gb), but would like to run it though the wavelets to add some extra fine detail.

http://www.pilotlightvfx.com/Images/Fireball_01.jpg

Would appreciate any crits if anyones got any.

Linky:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxDlynvKaA0

bariscan90

11 November 2010, 01:57 PM

Hi everyone,here is my Large Scale Smoke Simulation..All comments and critics are welcome.

http://www.vimeo.com/16427306

FabianB

11 November 2010, 02:02 PM

Hey Joe,
it's looking great! But IMO you don't have to use such a low spacing for a fireball.
I still think explosions and fireballs and stuff like this, always looks better if you don't get too low on the spacing. Low quality, low iterations and an ok spacing is the key I guess. So try to bring up the spacing a little bit and try to keep the look by tweaking the gradient and the opacity, this usually works pretty good for fire and helps you to save some ram for wavelet.

FabianB

11 November 2010, 02:05 PM

Hi everyone,here is my Large Scale Smoke Simulation..All comments and critics are welcome.

http://www.vimeo.com/16427306

Man, I can't watch vimeo on this pc! But from the preview pic it already looks awesome! You are using particles for emittion right? I hate this thread, everybody is constantly raising the bar. :) I know what I'm doing tonight! ;)

bariscan90

11 November 2010, 02:08 PM

Man, I can't watch vimeo on this pc! But from the preview pic it already looks awesome! You are using particles for emittion right? I hate this thread, everybody is constantly raising the bar. :) I know what I'm doing tonight! ;)

Hi Fabian,thank you for your comment.Its based on Simple Source.I used one sphere source,thats all.

PsychoSilence

11 November 2010, 02:09 PM

what is the best way to break up the meteor..do you think i should hand animate pieces breaking off or use something like fracture in maya or rayfire?sorry for such a noob question!
also i was thinking should i just finish animating the meteor with the breaking off chunks and the emition of smaller pieces first before taking it into fumefx["i should hey"] :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: and if so what would be the best way to approach this?
need serious help here please... :bowdown:

Not the individual pieces but see how it has mutliple streams of fire from athmosphere entry/friction.

circusboy

11 November 2010, 02:15 PM

Would appreciate any crits if anyones got any.

Linky:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxDlynvKaA0

My only crit should be pretty easy. There seems to be some odd black smoke in the column that doesn't quite fit. But just a gradient tweak I would think.

Glacierise

11 November 2010, 02:21 PM

@Baris: Great smoke dude, and brutal 165 gig sim :D That's the way to do it!

@Joe: Detail wise it's quite ok, the fire shader is a bit wrong though. This gap in the density works for smaller scale flames, but for this big fireballs you need a solid mass of flame. This could make your shader look simpler, but in that case just increase the color, so you can see more of the saturated darker color where the gap is, and not totally cut it out. Hope that helps :)

bariscan90

11 November 2010, 02:30 PM

@Baris: Great smoke dude, and brutal 165 gig sim :D That's the way to do it!

@Joe: Detail wise it's quite ok, the fire shader is a bit wrong though. This gap in the density works for smaller scale flames, but for this big fireballs you need a solid mass of flame. This could make your shader look simpler, but in that case just increase the color, so you can see more of the saturated darker color where the gap is, and not totally cut it out. Hope that helps :)

:) Hehe,thank you,my first large scaling took 336 GB !! :D

tarik3d

11 November 2010, 02:46 PM

Here is a test I saved out. Any comments are welcome :)

http://www.vimeo.com/16430618

Thanks

FabianB

11 November 2010, 03:21 PM

Here is a test I saved out. Any comments are welcome :)

http://www.vimeo.com/16430618

Thanks

hey Tarik, nice test, but you should really work on your fire shader! Try to use a black gradient with only a few harsh divided white, orange and red areas on the left and hard opacity peaks on these. Also when you get this "crown effect" on your fire it's a sign to dial down your radial velocity or to increase your simulation steps.

tarik3d

11 November 2010, 03:50 PM

Cheers mate, I wanted a sort of flairing out look but thats good what you say about uping the settings and about fire shader I will play some more with that :) thank you

JoeBananas

11 November 2010, 04:16 PM

thanks for all the crits. Some good info for me to go on there. I normally don't for for a shader like that, but was trying to avoid bleaching out the flames, and keep some detail in there.

Interesting idea about increasing the spacing, I'd not really thought of going that way with it. I guess I'm stuck in my fume 1.2 methods!

Not the individual pieces but see how it has mutliple streams of fire from athmosphere entry/friction.

WOW thats exactly the look Im trying to achieve.its perfect reference...thanks a lot :bounce:
i think for now I am going to hold off on FFX and just get the pieces breaking off part sorted

thanks so much

adom86

11 November 2010, 12:35 PM

Hey.. I felt like doing a fireball!

Took fabian's advice about keeping a low detail etc so this one is a 1000x1000x1000 grid and memory usage during first sim was only 1.3gig and then used a wavelet spacing of 1.5 with strength's of 20 on fire and smoke. Little post production on there to bring out the smoke a bit better (and of course a bit of glow) :P

Please crit heavily.. so I can get better ! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vokPCNMcMpg

FabianB

11 November 2010, 01:16 PM

I think it turned out great! (at least it looks like this on my Iphone, youtube is blocked here, so I don't watch funny videos all the time :))
The fire could last a little longer imo, so perhaps you could lower the burnrate a little bit.

edit: oh just noticed the 8GB sim wasn't yours :) I got confused by all the fireballs on here. :)

depleteD

11 November 2010, 05:46 PM

Awesome stuff guys :D

adom86

11 November 2010, 11:09 AM

New version! Lowered the burn rate and the strength in wavelet... emitter is still pumping out temperature after the big boom which I overlooked until comp!

It looks great! Much better than version2, the burnrate is perfect now!
That your are still emitting temperature after the boom doesn't really matter imo, looks cool! But perhaps I would render the wall. :)

PS: Fume 2.1a is out

Dusmus

11 November 2010, 11:25 AM

Looks great Adom, a little too white or not orange enough but hey that's just my taste ;)

adom86

11 November 2010, 11:42 AM

Cheers guys! Yea I was thinking it is a little blown out.. ill tweak it in comp and see what I can come up with :)

Dusmus

11 November 2010, 11:49 AM

Heh Adam, just realized I was talking to you at the same time on Vimeo about the RF vorticity trick, funny :D

adom86

11 November 2010, 12:10 PM

Heh Adam, just realized I was talking to you at the same time on Vimeo about the RF vorticity trick, funny :D

Ah yea :) Hello again!

XRM

11 November 2010, 12:22 PM

Hey Adam...IT really looks nice...The Vorticity looks kewl man. I like the breaking of the fire seen inside the smoke.... :applause:

Cheers!!! :)

Cryptite

11 November 2010, 12:44 PM

Wow this thread sure has... exploded... lately.

circusboy

11 November 2010, 01:13 PM

Cheers guys! Yea I was thinking it is a little blown out.. ill tweak it in comp and see what I can come up with :)
I'd make it much less blown out and re-render and increase that blownout look in comp.
Harder to go back the other way IMHO...you might have trouble.

adom86

11 November 2010, 03:20 PM

Hey Adam, howz the results of the Flame Thrower now?

Cheers!!! :)

Ahh yes it is on my to do list. Just helping my colleague with a compositing RnD at the moment.. I do the 3D he does the rest :) .. anyway I did a little test and turbulence helped a little but it still mushroomed. I have had a suggestion to ramp the rate of particles up a little so they dont blast out all at once. Shall set a sim going before I leave work :P

:sad: Just tested it, I think the old redrawing was much better! It's not updating in realtime anymore while you scrub through the timeline.

walee

11 November 2010, 07:35 AM

hello, i'm creating a ring of fire, and my render are pretty big, The Torus is the emitter of the simmulation, and as you can see there are some banding problems. I have a spacing of 0.2cm that gives me a fumeFX box of 208x643x693 and the sim goes up to 8gb. And it seems that even though i increase the resolution of the box i still get these banding, some i'm wondering if there's another thing to it ?

I need to specify that this render will not be use in an animation, but in a still image, so that's why i need to be as photoreal as possible and get rid of the banding :).

Thank you for your help.

FlorinMocanu

11 November 2010, 08:46 AM

Yo guys. This is my first time posting here, though not the first time i am reading this thread.

I've started recently to properly learn fumefx and i did some tests, 3dsmax 2010 and default scanline for render.
This weekend i will start to work on an explosion, not a nuke mushroom one, i'll go for Particle flow and fumefx as the method, since from what i read around here it seems a better way than just only fumefx.

Hope you like my first tests, CC is really welcome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6kgdyiP7Uk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlOQEQCYrqw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbaPcak12u8

FabianB

11 November 2010, 08:55 AM

hello, i'm creating a ring of fire, and my render are pretty big, The Torus is the emitter of the simmulation, and as you can see there are some banding problems. I have a spacing of 0.2cm that gives me a fumeFX box of 208x643x693 and the sim goes up to 8gb. And it seems that even though i increase the resolution of the box i still get these banding, some i'm wondering if there's another thing to it ?

I need to specify that this render will not be use in an animation, but in a still image, so that's why i need to be as photoreal as possible and get rid of the banding :).

Thank you for your help.
There are 3 things that you can do:
01. Use a map for emission
02. Or/and use the fire opacity curve to make these "banding" areas less opaque.
03. You could also try to check soften near objects in the render tab

For the spacing: perhaps you can make your torus a little smaller. For example, I always use the same grid size and units setup for everything, so I know exactly how which value will affect my sim. So if I need to emit from an object, I scale the object to the grid and not the other way around.

Hope that helps,
Fabian

XRM

11 November 2010, 09:35 AM

Hey FlorinMocanu (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=272968)...those tests are good bro...Keep testing each and every parameter in FumeFX...and keep posting your results man......

Cheers!!! :)

FabianB

11 November 2010, 09:47 AM

Hey Florin!
Yeah great tests!
Perhaps lower the velocity a little on the first video, the fire looks a little bit too "streamy".
And I would lower the turbulence a little on the second. Besides from that I like it a lot!

cheers,
Fabian

tool2heal

11 November 2010, 12:13 PM

hello, i'm creating a ring of fire, and my render are pretty big, The Torus is the emitter of the simmulation, and as you can see there are some banding problems. I have a spacing of 0.2cm that gives me a fumeFX box of 208x643x693 and the sim goes up to 8gb. And it seems that even though i increase the resolution of the box i still get these banding, some i'm wondering if there's another thing to it ?

I need to specify that this render will not be use in an animation, but in a still image, so that's why i need to be as photoreal as possible and get rid of the banding :).

Thank you for your help.

A couple of suggestions if not already tried.
1. increase the jittering in the render tab. default is 3, bump it to like 11-12
Also make sure the steps is lowest 10, not 50.
2. Sim a velocity channel and add motion blur. :)

adom86

11 November 2010, 12:42 PM

Maybe Im being a bit stupid today but has the z-depth option in the Fusionworks tab dissapeared! :P

mclawest

11 November 2010, 01:11 PM

...you are definitely on the right track! You are using particles for the emission, right? Perhaps you should try to fade out the velocity over time. (If you are using TP make sure you move the particles to another group before...
Fabian
well, I did a several tests, and I think that I get it, but now, I'm trying to get rid of stretch smoke during deceleration.. At this stage I don't use any spacewarps and I don't use a turbulence (in the Simulation tab).
here is the video: http://vimeo.com/16532439

FabianB

11 November 2010, 01:34 PM

Yes, the speed is much better now! But I think you are emitting too much smoke, the temperature dissipates a little too fast and the gravity is a little too high (if you are using Fume 2.1, smoke buoyancy)
You get this stretching because when the temperature dissipates and you have too much smoke/or too much gravity the smoke will start to settle and fall back down. If you use less smoke it would dissipate more in this areas and you could just kill it off with the smoke dissipation value.

fiveoften

11 November 2010, 05:47 PM

Hey guys. i have a problem. everytime i render the fume smoke or fire out. i become a black shine arround the smoke not a perfect alpha. i test png with integratet alpha or tga. all the same.

http://www.bs-media.org/Bilder/nuke_test.png
Anyone a idee what i can do?

JohnnyRandom

11 November 2010, 06:45 PM

- Improved Preview Window redrawing.

:sad: Just tested it, I think the old redrawing was much better! It's not updating in realtime anymore while you scrub through the timeline.

Which version of max are you using?

When I tested I achieved much better rates in 2010 than in 2011, on low/medium based sims. The difference was sometimes significant, it was faster and cleaner. This issue arose mostly because there were complaints about the horizontal lines in the preview window.

For instance this clip is built on a 250x250x250 grid: this is an average from 3 runs through the timeline

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I used this to match the preview window in each version -
$.resizePreview 600

You should notice that 2010 ffx 2.0 and max2011 ffx 2.1a have about the same times, not sure why this is, although that I have noticed overall viewport performance has declined for me in 2011.

Of course, as I am sure you already know (others may not), your hardware will play a big role too in any of your playback with whatever version you are using.

FabianB

11 November 2010, 07:12 PM

Hey John!

Thank you very much for the comparison! Yes, I'm on Max 2011.
And yes I noticed that, too! If you have the preview window open it kinda slows everything down. BUT when I was scrubbing through the timeline back and forth in 2.1 I still got real time feedback, now in 2.1a it's skipping frames. It's like it's not updating on every frame anymore but after a set timerange.
You had this "scanline" running through it, but for me, this is still much better than not being able to see you sim in motion.
You know I like to scrub through the timeline and make this sounds like "WOOOOOOMMMP" and then scrub a little slower and go to slowmotion. :D That helps me visualize. :)

Thanks again,
Fabian

THarland

11 November 2010, 11:49 PM

My sound is more like "BaWLoooooooooooshhhhhhh".
*I thought I was the only one who did that.*

martaaay

11 November 2010, 11:53 PM

When I'm planning a shot in my head while walking around, I'll make the sound effectswith my mouth. Sometimes I dont realize people are near by until the funny looks.

XRM

11 November 2010, 06:50 AM

When I'm planning a shot in my head while walking around, I'll make the sound effectswith my mouth. Sometimes I dont realize people are near by until the funny looks.

Lolz guyz....Thats so true for me too... :D

KaaaaaabbbboooooooooooooooooooMmmmm!!!

Cheers!!! :beer:

FlorinMocanu

11 November 2010, 10:18 AM

Hey guys,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnCqlTUt178

This is my first attempt at an explosion, have a lot of things to fix/tweak, but i would really apreciate your comments and critique, always nice to have a fresh eye looking at it.

My own ideas are that i need to make the smoke last a lot longer and simulate it with 3-4 substeps per frame since now it's also a bit choppy at the end. Also, the fireball could be a bit bigger and powerful.

Hope you like it,

Cheers

XRM

11 November 2010, 12:22 PM

Hey guys,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnCqlTUt178

This is my first attempt at an explosion, have a lot of things to fix/tweak, but i would really apreciate your comments and critique, always nice to have a fresh eye looking at it.

My own ideas are that i need to make the smoke last a lot longer and simulate it with 3-4 substeps per frame since now it's also a bit choppy at the end. Also, the fireball could be a bit bigger and powerful.

Hope you like it,

Cheers

Hi Buddy, well I think as newbie to FumeFX, you did a pretty good job!
Some suggestions here :
The smoke is dissipating at a very unnatural way. Its rather very very fast. Slow down the dissipatiion. Make some smoke to stay and linger.
The initial impact is very main for an explosion. It starts very fast and then gradually slows down. In your's its like slow in, then fast and then slow in. Thats why the beauty is missing.
And please change the camera angle a bit. Pull it out. :)

Cheers!!! :)

FabianB

11 November 2010, 01:18 PM

Hey guys,
here is another quick test I did over the weekend + file.

http://vimeo.com/16615571

The simulation is pretty fast 7 hours, default+wavelet! To speed up the rendering you can delete the second light. Does anyone know what's up with the flickering??

cheers,
Fabian

Kresimir

11 November 2010, 01:38 PM

BUT when I was scrubbing through the timeline back and forth in 2.1 I still got real time feedback, now in 2.1a it's skipping frames. It's like it's not updating on every frame anymore but after a set timerange.
Thanks again,
Fabian

Hi Fabian,

I can say that this will be solved for good in 2.1b.. as well as some Windows 7
refresh issues.

Thank you.

Kresimir

Kresimir

11 November 2010, 01:43 PM

Hey guys,
here is another quick test I did over the weekend + file.

http://vimeo.com/16615571

The simulation is pretty fast 7 hours, default+wavelet! To speed up the rendering you can delete the second light. Does anyone know what's up with the flickering??

cheers,
Fabian

I would love to have this scene so I can reproduce flickering. I am very interested to see what is causing it. What did you use for rendering ? Does it happen with Scanline ?

Thanks

Kresimir

FabianB

11 November 2010, 01:55 PM

Hey Kresimir,
thanks for the awesome support, like always. :)
Yes, the flickering is strange, I never had a problem with it actually! It's the first test ever where I really started to notice it! You can download the scene on the vimeo page, or here:
http://vfx-training.com/training/BigFire_Fabian.rar

Thanks again,
Fabian

Edit: yes, I rendered it with scanline

walee

11 November 2010, 05:03 PM

There are 3 things that you can do:
01. Use a map for emission
02. Or/and use the fire opacity curve to make these "banding" areas less opaque.
03. You could also try to check soften near objects in the render tab

For the spacing: perhaps you can make your torus a little smaller. For example, I always use the same grid size and units setup for everything, so I know exactly how which value will affect my sim. So if I need to emit from an object, I scale the object to the grid and not the other way around.

Hope that helps,
Fabian

A couple of suggestions if not already tried.
1. increase the jittering in the render tab. default is 3, bump it to like 11-12
Also make sure the steps is lowest 10, not 50.
2. Sim a velocity channel and add motion blur. :)

Thank you guys for your answer, i think it's definitly an issue with the fumefx being close to the mesh but i haven't solve my issue yet :(, i think i will do some touchup in photoshop in post.

Thanks anyway.

Cheers

circusboy

11 November 2010, 06:07 PM

@FabianB For the Flickering-it won't render faster but if you duplicate your light and slightly offset it. Then bring down the intensity of both lights so match the look of a single light
this may sort it. I had an issue quite like that-in my case I had a total of three lights
but two maybe enough. But by far it was the nicest looking workaround of all I tried.
I've never had the issue with shots that had multiple lights (by design) only with single light shots BTW.

@walee i second the Jittering. Take it up to say 100 to see a profound effect and then dial it back. A tiney amount of motion blur might also smooth this out. But you need to sim with velocity on to get mb.

Gamble

11 November 2010, 12:20 AM

Hi everyone,

every time I press cancel during the simulation I loose some of my already calculated frames.. so for example, if I'm on frame 26 and I press cancel and then go back to "continue simulation" it will start from frame 20.. If I'm on frame 34 and continue sim after the cancellation it will start from frame 30 and so on.. this is quite a big issue for me as I'm using only one pc and losing frames that took 5 hours to calculate is really annoying.. Is it possible to change that FumeFX would start to simulate from the last calculated frame..?

FabianB

11 November 2010, 12:25 AM

Hi everyone,

every time I press cancel during the simulation I loose some of my already calculated frames.. so for example, if I'm on frame 26 and I press cancel and then go back to "continue simulation" it will start from frame 20.. If I'm on frame 34 and continue sim after the cancellation it will start from frame 30 and so on.. this is quite a big issue for me as I'm using only one pc and losing frames that took 5 hours to calculate is really annoying.. Is it possible to change that FumeFX would start to simulate from the last calculated frame..?
Somewhere in the options it says: take snapshot every XX frame. Set this to 1! I guess by default it's set to 10 which would explain your problem. :)

Edit: I think it will take up more hd space if you do it this way, I would always use the stop button instead of canceling, because this will automatically take a snapshot.

FlorinMocanu

11 November 2010, 08:59 AM

Small update to my previous explosion test. Though the smoke trails are to well defined now, i need to make the dissipation strength a bit higher and maybe add more turbulence to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIhSzCyu83o

Darknon

11 November 2010, 10:55 AM

about the flickering. I've had that to, but when I merge the fume container into another scene with another lighting setup, then the flickering is gone. So, I suppose it has something to do with lighting. But I'm just guessing here

FabianB

11 November 2010, 12:41 PM

Small update to my previous explosion test. Though the smoke trails are to well defined now, i need to make the dissipation strength a bit higher and maybe add more turbulence to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIhSzCyu83o

Hey Florin,

It's looking good, I would keep the dissipation strength as it is, but I would fade out the particle radius over life!

about the flickering. I've had that to, but when I merge the fume container into another scene with another lighting setup, then the flickering is gone. So, I suppose it has something to do with lighting. But I'm just guessing here
You possibly went form a single light (with strong shadows) to multiple lights. Which would fall in line with what I posted above.

adom86

11 November 2010, 04:52 PM

Hey all!

What kind of workflow do you guys follow when comping your FFX. I know a lot of people like to get the colours etc pretty much spot on while still in max but I prefer to render out into passes and then change but what about when I want to keep GI? Ideally I would like to render my FFX in vray and keep the fire/smoke/GI pass.

You guys have a work around? With passes only being supported by scanline :)

circusboy

11 November 2010, 05:22 PM

I've used LPM with vray no problem.
Workflow wise it really depends-in the case where its important that the fire looks like its *inside* the smoke I'll render them all together and also seperate layers for max flexibility.

adom86

11 November 2010, 06:26 PM

I've used LPM with vray no problem.
Workflow wise it really depends-in the case where its important that the fire looks like its *inside* the smoke I'll render them all together and also seperate layers for max flexibility.

LPM? I set the FFX fire/smoke passes and then switched to vray and no luck... Interested in how you get GI with vray and giving you the render pass option :)

circusboy

11 November 2010, 06:52 PM

I don't have access to LPM where i work now but LPM has a render manager control where you tell it which renderer to use. It definetly worked at the time-but i can't test it anymore.

XRM

11 November 2010, 07:29 PM

Hi adom, man LPM is Light Pass Manager....

Cheers!!! :)

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